Gay Superheroes
Very nice article...
The Gay Superhero: Queer Fodder Or Natural Progression?
by Joel Dossi, May 30, 2005
Back in the days of penny loafers and sock hops, when the phrase “faster than a speeding bullet” was broadcast weekly on television sets throughout the country, psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham argued to congress--and in his bestselling 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent--that America’s comic book superheroes were actually sexually subversive fodder designed to turn American youth into leading a life of depravity.
Batman and Robin, for instance, were "the wish fulfillment of two homosexuals living together," with Batman portrayed as a debonair yet decadent sugar daddy and ‘his young ward’ Robin as “a handsome ephebic boy, usually shown in his uniform with bare legs. He is buoyant with energy and devoted to nothing on earth or in interplanetary space as much as to Bruce Wayne. He often stands with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident.”Ironically, Vincent J. Roth, an openly gay comic book aficionado, corporate lawyer and the independent-film auteur of the new gay-themed superhero movie Surge of Power, agrees in part with Wertham’s assessment of comic book heroes.
“There is a certain amount of homo-eroticism in their exaggerated, perfect bodies,” he said in a recent phone interview. “Every superhero, whether he works out or not, seems to be drawn with highly sculpted muscles that can be seen rippling under any material of his costume.”
But Roth doesn’t even stop there in describing the similarity between the GLBT community and the world of superheroes. While he doesn’t agree with Wertham’s paranoid recruitment theories, Roth argues that there are many characteristic aspects to a superhero’s life that are shared by gays and lesbians, which help make superhero movies very popular with the GLBT community.
Read the full article here on AfterElton.com and thanks to Google Alerts for putting me on to it...
The Gay Superhero: Queer Fodder Or Natural Progression?
by Joel Dossi, May 30, 2005
Back in the days of penny loafers and sock hops, when the phrase “faster than a speeding bullet” was broadcast weekly on television sets throughout the country, psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham argued to congress--and in his bestselling 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent--that America’s comic book superheroes were actually sexually subversive fodder designed to turn American youth into leading a life of depravity.
Batman and Robin, for instance, were "the wish fulfillment of two homosexuals living together," with Batman portrayed as a debonair yet decadent sugar daddy and ‘his young ward’ Robin as “a handsome ephebic boy, usually shown in his uniform with bare legs. He is buoyant with energy and devoted to nothing on earth or in interplanetary space as much as to Bruce Wayne. He often stands with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident.”Ironically, Vincent J. Roth, an openly gay comic book aficionado, corporate lawyer and the independent-film auteur of the new gay-themed superhero movie Surge of Power, agrees in part with Wertham’s assessment of comic book heroes.
“There is a certain amount of homo-eroticism in their exaggerated, perfect bodies,” he said in a recent phone interview. “Every superhero, whether he works out or not, seems to be drawn with highly sculpted muscles that can be seen rippling under any material of his costume.”
But Roth doesn’t even stop there in describing the similarity between the GLBT community and the world of superheroes. While he doesn’t agree with Wertham’s paranoid recruitment theories, Roth argues that there are many characteristic aspects to a superhero’s life that are shared by gays and lesbians, which help make superhero movies very popular with the GLBT community.
Read the full article here on AfterElton.com and thanks to Google Alerts for putting me on to it...
posted by CXW @ 2:21 pm
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